The Shifting Storm (Book 4)

by Jeff Hale

  “Thanks, Mom.” I headed towards the stairs that were on the far side of the foyer, motioning for Darien to follow me. My dad’s house was fairly big, two stories, with five bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a family room and den on top of the normal living room, kitchen and dining. There was an attached garage, but no basement.

  Three of the bedrooms were upstairs; mine, Kris’s, and my parents’, while the two guest rooms were downstairs off the family room. I led Darien to mine, opening the door to usher him into a large room painted in pale turquoise, with a queen sized, oak four-poster bed against one wall, a tall dresser on the wall with the door, and an antique desk under the one window, complete with chair and seldom used computer. A small television sat on a stand in one corner, VCR and DVD player attached. In the center of the burgundy quilt on the bed sat a small-dog sized stuffed lynx.

  There was a picture on the nightstand next to the lamp, one that Nina had taken while we were all up at Lake Mead. Aerick was in dark shorts and a tank top, sitting on the ground with me sitting between his knees, my back against his chest, his arms around me, our cheeks pressed together. I had been wearing a turquoise bikini. If I remembered correctly, this had been taken the same day that Darien and Alex had come to Las Vegas to get me. Aerick was actually smiling in the picture, a genuine smile that people didn’t get to see too often.

  Darien spotted it, dropped the bags at the foot of the bed, picked it up before I could say anything, and stared at it. The corner of his lip twitched in unconcealed anger and his fingers were tightening on the frame enough to start the glass to crack.

  I held out my hand. “Darien, give me the picture.”

  His eyes met mine and for a moment I was staggered with the raw emotion I saw in them: anger, pain, hate, despair. I could hear a faint squeal as the crack across the glass grew wider, but I knew he was trying to control himself, or that frame would have been so much pulp by now. I grasped a free side of the frame, tugging gently.

  “Let go, Darien, please?”

  He did, a broken sigh leaving him, and I tucked the picture away in the bottom drawer of the dresser. My eyes lit on the stuffed lynx again, a present from Aerick for my nineteenth birthday, something I couldn’t bear to keep at home, so left here because I couldn’t bear to put it away either.

  I scooped it up, opened the closet door that was next to the dresser, and shoved it as far in the back as it would go. When I turned back around, Darien was sitting on the bed, elbows on his knees, forehead cradled in his hands.

  “Do you still love him?” he asked dejectedly.

  “Yes,” I answered, not wanting to lie to him. I knelt on the thick silver carpeting in front of him, pulled his chin up so he could see my face. “I’m sorry, Darien, but I do. I think I always will, and there’s nothing I can really do about it.” I pressed my lips to his, ran my fingers down the side of his face, tried to put as much of my feelings into my eyes as I could. “But I love you, too, not the same way, but just as equally. You have just as much of my heart as he does.”

  He was quiet for several heartbeats, his brown eyes boring into mine as though he were trying to see down into the very depths of my soul. Finally, he blinked, twice.

  “Did you just say that you love me?” he asked uncertainly, catching my hands with his.

  Did I? I guess I had. It had been much easier to say than I thought it was going to. “Yes, I did.”

  “Oh, Kat.” He pulled me against him, lips soft on mine as his arms went around me. “Thank you.”

  His mouth peppered my face with light, feathery touches, hands finding their way under the edge of my t-shirt to splay against my lower back. I could feel other parts of him coming awake where he was pressed against my belly and it sent a thrill of desire through me. I caught his lips with mine, deepening the kiss, hearing the catch of noise in his throat as my fingers began to work at the buttons on his jeans.

  “Ahem.”

  I stopped what I was doing, freezing against Darien. He chuckled, pulling away reluctantly and patting my shirt back into place while I refastened his jeans.

  “Good evening, Roslyn,” he said happily, his fingers tickling my side on purpose to make me squirm.

  My mother was starting to make it a habit of interrupting Darien and me.

  “I hate to bother you, but I need to talk to Kat for a little bit alone, Darien,” my mom said, not even bothering to hide her amusement.

  I stood, forcing myself not to blush. “Sure thing, Mom.”

  “I’ll bring her back soon,” my mom promised Darien as she drew me down the hall towards her and my father’s room.

  The room was a tad larger than mine, another dark-wood queen sized four-poster, two dressers on either side of a huge walk in closet. There was one window in here as well, covered in heavy blinds and thick curtains, and there were curtains to enclose the bed. These were currently tied back at the posts. Another door led into their own private bathroom; the two other bedrooms shared the second upstairs bathroom.

  She sat on the ornately carved wooden bench seat at the foot of the bed, patting the space beside her to indicate she wanted me to sit next to her. The walls in this room were a pale silver-grey, the carpet thick crimson, and the bedding, curtains, and cushions all matched.

  “What did you need to talk about, Mom?” I asked once I’d gotten settled.

  “I know you’re probably tired, sweetie, and I hate to hit you with this so quick, but I needed to talk to you before I put it off and you headed back to Las Vegas.”

  “We’re going to be here for a couple days, Mom.”

  “I know, but it’s rather important and I didn’t want to… if you’re too tired, that’s okay, sweetie. I’ve gotten used to the hours your father keeps now, so it’s only about midday for me.” She laughed nervously. “It can wait.”

  “No, Mom, it’s okay, go ahead. We got some sleep on the plane, so I’m good. Can’t guarantee I won’t crash tomorrow though.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  She nodded, opened her mouth to say something, sighed, then took a deep breath. “Sorry, kiddo, this is just kind of big.” She patted my hand. “Anyway, your father and I have been talking, a lot, and this thing with Kris just kind of cemented the decision I’d come to anyway.”

  I was a bit lost as to what she was getting at. “I don’t follow.”

  “I’m not getting any younger, Katelyn, I’ll be forty-two next month. Your dad still looks like he’s in his late twenties, and barring anything unexpected, he’s got several hundred more years, if not longer, ahead of him.” She bit her lip, not quite meeting my eyes.

  Holy hell. I wasn’t completely dense. “You’re going to have dad turn you into a vampire?”

  She fiddled with her skirt, her hands moving restlessly in her lap. “Well, no, sweetie. You see, there is a fundamental difference between a normal vampire and a hybrid vampire. He could turn me, yes, but I wouldn’t be the same as your dad.”

  “Oh, well then…”

  “I need to be a shifter first.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I want you to be the one to change me.”

  My eyes went wide and I blinked at her. I turned in my seat and leaned back just so I could see her better, make sure she was serious. She was.

  “But… you don’t have any shifter blood… do you?” I asked, still trying to wrap my thoughts around what she had just said.

  “No, not that I’m aware of anyway, you got that from your father. But you don’t need shifter blood to become one from what I’m told. Alex was turned, wasn’t he?” She smiled hopefully at me.

  She’s serious. Dead fucking serious!

  “No! Mom! I mean, yes, Alex was, you can be turned, but do you know what’s involved in that?” I asked, worried now.

  “Yes, your father explained it to me. It’s not like you have to kill me, or even almost kill me, for it to work.”

  “Jeez! Mom, I know, but I’d still have to fuck you up pr
etty bad to make sure it took. You’d live, probably, but you’d be in some severe state of hurt, and if for some reason it didn’t work, you’d have some nasty scars. They call shifters made that way ‘savaged’ for a reason!” I shuddered, feeling somewhat sick to my stomach as a part of me actually perked up in anticipation at the thought of sinking claws and fangs into flesh, even my own mother’s.

  “Plus,” I continued anxiously, “I’ve got some fucked up thing going on with me that makes me enjoy the violence just a little bit too much. I’d be afraid I couldn’t stop.”

  She put her hands on my shoulders. “Your father would be there, Kat, to make sure everything went according to plan. If you lost control, he could stop you, couldn’t he?”

  I nodded brusquely, trying to wipe the visuals from my mind. “Yeah, I think he could.”

  “Is it me becoming like your father that makes you hesitate, or just your worry over hurting me?”

  “Just worry, Mom. I don’t want you to end up dead. I’ve already got centuries lying ahead for me, so does Darien, so does Alex, do does Dad; I’m certainly not going to begrudge you wanting to hop on the train. Just means I won’t have to attend your funeral any time soon.” I gave her a wry look. If she wanted to join the ranks of the long-lived, I was all for it. I just didn’t want her to die in the process.

  “Then you’ll think about it? I don’t mean to press you, sweetie, but I was hoping for an answer before you left, so your father and I could make preparations. I just, well, I thought it would be rather fitting, since I gave birth to you, if you would do the honor of bringing me into a new life as well.”

  Is she trying to make me feel guilty? I scrutinized her face, saw only love and hope there. Nope, she actually does feel that way. I drew her into a tight hug. “I’ll think about it, Mom, okay? Just give me a few days.”

  “Thank you, kiddo. Well, that was the bombshell I had planned on dropping on you, so if you want to go get Darien and come downstairs, me, Kris, and Alex are going to start coloring Easter eggs.” She stood and I followed her out of the room. I stopped outside my bedroom door as she continued past and down the stairs.

  Easter eggs? Only my mother could ask me to commit a heinously violent act upon her person and then turn around and color eggs like everything was fine.

  I opened the door to my room, saw that Darien wasn’t there and figured he was already down in the kitchen. I went down the stairs to join them.

  This was going to be a strange Easter this year.

  THIRTEEN

  DARIEN

  She said she loved me.

  It was enough to just about make me forget about Aerick, make me forget the anger that had come over me in seeing her so happy with him in that picture. She had put away the stuffed animal as well, so I could only assume it was something to do with him too.

  After Kat left with her mother, I sat there on the bed, unsure of what to do that didn’t involve snooping through her room. A knock on the door frame got my attention and I looked up to see Matt standing there. I hadn’t even heard him in the hall. I knew that he and Katelyn’s father were very close friends, but I was still surprised to see him here on Easter.

  “Nothing better to do for Easter?” I asked him, grinning.

  “Well, Kris is here so of course not.” He motioned out into the hallway with his head. “Loch wants to see you, if you don’t mind?”

  I followed him into the hallway. “What does Kris being here have to do with it?”

  “Kat didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me…” A light went off in my head. “You and Kris?”

  “Yes.” He took me past a couple of doors, then the hall took a right hand turn.

  “When did that happen?”

  He shrugged. “Before Kat ended up in Las Vegas. Did Kat tell you what happened to Kris?”

  “No. Then again, I was keeping her pretty… distracted lately.”

  Matt gave me a knowing grin, but his expression sobered quickly. “Someone shot her, right there in public at the airport, one of those Purity Movement zealots.”

  “Shit! Is she okay?” Kris might be human, but I had made her part of my pack. “Did they catch the person who did it?”

  A malevolent smile crossed Matt’s lips. “He’s… been taken care of, although I appreciate where your thoughts were going. And Kris is fine, now. The doctors had her out of immediate danger when I got there but I got her out of there pretty quick.”

  Matt had been a surgeon in his younger days, held a degree even, although I wasn’t sure that one issued in 1871 would be valid anymore. He had a way with knowing what was wrong with someone and how to fix it. I’d seen him patch people up more times than I could remember. We stopped in front of a door and Matt knocked on it, pushing it open when he heard the voice beyond reply.

  Lochlan’s office was lined with bookcases that reached all the way to the ceiling. He had a large desk to one side with a leather upholstered high-backed chair, a laptop open on the top of the desk. A dark leather couch and matching chairs sat on the other side of the room, a polished wood coffee table in between them. The room was windowless, but there was a monitor in one corner that was showing feed from multiple security cameras.

  I heard the door close behind me and realized Matt had left me alone in here. I shoved my hands in my jeans pockets, waiting for Lochlan to close out was he was doing on the computer. He got up and moved to sit in one of the leather armchairs, gesturing toward the other with a hand.

  “Sit, Darien. I ‘ave things I must discus wi’ ye.”

  He was older than I was by a good thirty years or so, had been a shifter for most, or all, of that, and still retained his Alpha status, even though he was now a rakshasa. Plus, he was Kat’s father. I sat.

  “I’ll cut tae the chase, son. You an’ Caitlín, yer a couple now?” he asked, leaning back into the chair and folding his hands on his lap. He looked ever the gentleman: pale-blue suit shirt, black dress pants, deep vermilion tie. His hair, just a shade lighter than Kat’s, was short and combed back, his blue eyes cold and bright. Freckles dusted the pale skin along his cheekbones. He was taller than me by about an inch, but I probably outweighed him by fifty pounds.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Wha’ about her other young man, tha’ Magister?”

  “You mean Aerick?”

  He nodded at me.

  I’d only found out a few days ago from Alex that Aerick and Kat had split up quite a while back, but I didn’t know any of the other details surrounding it. “I’m not sure, Lochlan. They’re not together anymore, but she says she still loves him.”

  He was bobbing his head. “I was afeared o’ that. ‘E’s dangerous, that boy is, they all are. Thinking they ‘ave the right to tell the rest of us what we can and canna do, playing judge, jury an’ executioner, and those are jus’ the weak ones, the sorcerers and MAGE. But that boy, he’s a step up from those sorcerers.”

  “I agree with you, I’ve seen some of what he can do, remember? But how is he different from those that run MAGE?” I was intrigued.

  Lochlan snorted. “The MAGE sorcerers are bad enough wi’ their magic, but there is another kind of Magister, although they are few. They’re different, stronger, deadlier. Sentinels, they’re called.”

  Sentinel. That’s what Kat had called Aerick.

  “They’re arrogant, strong, crazy, think they can do ennathing. Ye need tae make sure he stays away from Caitlín, he’ll only end up getting ‘er killed,” Lochlan warned me.

  “You sound like you’ve had some brushes with them before?” I wondered.

  He leaned forward. “Can ye keep a secret, lad? Something ye canna tell to either Caitlín or my Roslyn?”

  “As long as it doesn’t endanger their lives, yes.”

  “Long ago, decades an’ decades, I had ano’er daughter. I wasna married to ‘er mo’er, and the woman passed the bairn off as somebody else’s.” He shrugged. “It saved ‘er honor, so I couldna begrudge ‘er that. Bu
t me daughter, she died because o’ Magister magic, sure as anything, an’ I’ll no have the same thing happen to my Caitlín.”

  “Kat has a sister?”

  “Half-sister, an’ had. The poor lass died a verra long time ago.”

  “Damn.”

  “Make no mention to Caitlín or Roslyn, they’ve no need tae know, it were something over and gone with long before they came about. But I wanted ye tae know, tae understand the gravity of the situation, that you need tae make sure that boy stays away from ‘er.”

  “You have my word, sir.”

  “Now fer the other thing I have need tae discus wi’ ye.”

  “Pardon my saying, Lochlan, and I do appreciate the confidences and trust, but you hardly know me. I know vampires are even less trusting than shifters, so I’m just a bit surprised that you would tell me so much,” I said, looking him in the eye and lacing my hands behind my neck.

  He cocked his head to one side, eyes noting my hands and the scars there. He gave me a look I couldn’t quite read. “Believe me, I know enough. Yer a wolf, aint ya?”

  “Yes.”

  “An ye love me daughter, and will till ye die?”

  “Without a doubt.”

  He raised a brow. “Well then, I ken there’s no marriage paper, but as far as I’m concerned ye’re my son-in-law.” He held out a hand to me, shaking mine when I took it. “Welcome tae the family.”

  I gave him a quick nod, not wanting to question his acceptance. Considering his hatred for Aerick, I was glad to be on the man’s good side.

  “I have a favor tae ask ye.”

  “Name it.”

  The look on his face was solemn and he sighed. I didn’t know if vampires actually breathed or not, but maybe it was habit. “My Roslyn doesna want tae grow old an’ die, and tae be quite honest, I don’t want her tae either.”

  “You plan on turning her,” I stated. It was an obvious thought, one that I could understand.